A Capstone Project is an assignment designed specifically to apply and showcase the skills you learned in the Specialization. To this end, the Business Strategy Capstone Project, a comprehensive Strategic Analysis, provides an opportunity for you to synthesize concepts and knowledge from the four prerequisite courses in the specialization. You may continue with the organization you selected for previous assignments or select a new organization for this project. You will analyze the current state of the organization, strategic issues facing the organization, strategic paths the organization might pursue, make a recommendation of the best path for the organization to pursue, and write an Executive Summary. Your finished project will serve as an artifact showcasing your ability to conduct research on/within an organization, select and apply the most appropriate analytical tools, build a well-supported case for a specific position, and effectively communicate key points with executive leadership.

CM

A very well thought final project where one can apply all the tools but also get the best out of such tools to create valuable analysis with the information found.

AM

Feb 24, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

An excellent specialization to learn about the strategies a firm uses. This specialization is a perfect leeway for someone who want to become a strategist.

从本节课中

Welcome and Getting Started

Welcome to the Business Strategy in Practice project-centered course and congratulations on completing the four prerequisite courses! In this course, you will bring together all that you have learned and employ your toolkit to develop your comprehensive Strategic Analysis. To get started, watch our "Welcome to the Business Strategy in Practice" video lecture. Then, read our Course Overview so you get a sense of what's ahead, including four milestones to help keep you on track to complete your project within the eight weeks. We are excited to watch you put your learning into action! Good luck, work hard, encourage one another, and enjoy!

教学方

Michael Lenox

Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer

Jared Harris

Samuel L. Slover Research Chair in Business Administration

脚本

Hello. Let me introduce to you a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In many ways, a SWOT analysis is the granddaddy of strategy frameworks. It's roots go back nearly 50 years. On it's surface, it's a relatively simple frame work and idea here. Can we identify these four areas? I like to highlight SWOT analysis, because it highlights the two main areas that we want to explore when doing a strategic analysis. The first is the external competitive environment. This is where the opportunities and threats come in. The second is understanding internal firm capabilities. This is where strengths and weaknesses come in. Now, in practice, you often see these types of two by twos presented. In which people will then have bullet point lists for each of these four categories. If you're doing a SWOT analysis, I would encourage you not to worry too much about whether something's an opportunity or threat. One could imagine framing it in different ways and putting it in different boxes. The important part here is to start to list out some of these areas. Most importantly is to recognize a SWOT analysis is really an overarching framework here. And what you really need to do is to dive deeper into each of these subjects. And in fact, many of the other tools in our toolkit will provide us further guidance for understanding strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. For example, capability analysis, environmental analysis, five forces analysis. These are all additional tools and frameworks that help us understand the external competitive environment. Similarly, capabilities analysis, strategy maps. These are tools that help us better understand the internal strengths and weaknesses of the firm. So again, SWOT analysis is a classic framework. It is useful for an overarching framing of doing a strategic analysis. But the key again is to dive a little deeper using some of the other tools in your toolkit.